Past & Present

Marychurch C.E (C) Primary School was a school located on Piggott Grove. It was built in 1974 and opened in 1975 to replace Bucknall C.E. Junior and Infants’ School on Guy Street. The exact date of its opening is believed to have been on Monday 28th April 1975.

The new school was built to better-accomodate 240 pupils that were registered with the old school. Pupils previously had to travel to another city school for PE activities, but the construction of this new one-storey building with 7 classrooms included a spacious hall for PE to be held within the one school. The headteacher at the time, Mrs. Brenda Summers, stated in a local newspaper article: "The facilities in the new school are a great improvement from the old school. The children will be able to have PE activities in the hall and on a playing field which is due to be added.". [2]

Marychurch Playing Fields was handed over to the school in 1976 and included a large football pitch with goal-posts on a pitch surface. This land was in use by the school until its closure in 2004.

The closure of the school came to light when it merged with the nearby Townsend C.E. (C) Primary School in 2004. This was due to a larger school being built to merge both schools together, under the name of Kingsland C.E. (C) Primary School (now Kingsland C.E. (C) Academy). Both Marychurch C.E. (C) Primary School and Townsend C.E. (C) Primary School were initially accomodated in Townsend C.E. (C) Primary School school until 2005, when Kingsland C.E. (C) Primary School had finished being built.

The Marychurch C.E (C) Primary School building was then converted to Surestart Kingsland Children’s Centre, which operated in it until around 2009 - when it was converted again to Reach 5. Whilst being used as Reach 5, the building was renamed to ACE Centre - and was also referred to as Old Marychurch Parish.

Shortly after 2012, Reach 5 moved out of the building - and it became vacant. Stoke-on-Trent City Council applied for planning permission to demolish the school building in May 2014 - and this was granted in June 2014. [3] However, the building was instead left to deteriorate for almost a decade until the site and the playing fields were earmarked for housing development. Groundwork testing was carried out on both sites in early 2020 whilst the building and playing fields remained in place, as Stoke-on-Trent City Council were intending to make use of the two areas.  [4] A proposal submitted to nearby residents in late 2020 to build 12 flats and 36 houses was rejected by the local community after an ePetition on the Stoke-on-Trent City Council website was started by Samuel Bateman (Founder of Our Bucknall). There were a total of 164 rejections to the proposed development. [5]

Councillor Heather Blurton of the Bucknall and Eaton Park Ward notified residents after a few weeks that the proposed development would not be going ahead on both sites. However, in December 2021, Stoke-on-Trent City Council applied for demolition of the school building. The demolition was granted, and work began demolishing the school in September 2022. Samuel Bateman was granted access into the building before demolition was carried out, to allow for photos and videos to be retained for the historical archive project on this website. Photos have been included of the demolition on this particular page.

After demolition of the school building, Stoke-on-Trent City Council put the land up for sale with a price tag of £300,000 - and it was sold to a private developer. [6] No development proposals have been received as of yet, and the only changes to the site up until now have been tree cuts. Both the former school building area and playing fields are now empty sites.